Re: [HACKERS] Point in Time Recovery

Tom Lane wrote:
> Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:
> > Tom Lane wrote:
> >> What is the point of having both archive_program and archive_dest as
> >> GUC variables?
>
> > I assume archive_dest is used for both archive and recovery of archives.
>
> You assume wrong; it's not used there.  There isn't any real good
> reason to suppose that the recovery process is going to fetch the files
> from exactly where archiving put them, anyhow.
>
> > I think the idea is that you would turn archiving on and off regularly
>
> Why in the world would you do that?  People who want PITR at all will
> want it 24x7.
>
> > while you might never change the archive_command value.  Also, how would
> > you disable it?  Set it to "", and if you do, you then have not way to
> > remember your command string when you want to re-enable it.
>
> Leave the original value in a comment, if you're going to want it again
> later.
>
> I don't think any of the above arguments outweigh the risk of people
> shooting themselves in the foot by enabling archive_mode without
> specifying a proper command/destination.

So you want to merge them all into a single command string.  That does
seem less error-prone.  I see a few variables that turn off
when set to '' like unix_socket_*.  How would this command string work?
How do you specify the WAL file name to transfer?

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